Stay ... just a little bit longer

Honoring a classic, plus my weekly shareables: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and a gay penguin

First up: Events!

—I am absolutely thrilled to join my friend Wright Thompson at Park Road Books in Charlotte on Sept. 29 so we can talk about his upcoming book THE BARN, which is about the piece of Mississippi land where Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. But of course, it is about SO much more than that—it claws back deep into the history of the people and the soil that spawned that tragedy, and so many others. Wright’s book is breathtaking. It’s a book America will be talking about this fall and for many years to come. Get there early. I’m expecting a packed house.

—Second, an update on my appearance at the On The Same Page festival in Ashe County, NC. I’ll be talking about DOGLAND at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 19. But you should come check out the whole festival—it’s awesome.

—Third, I’m doing a talk on Oct. 27 for one of my favorite Charlotte nonprofits, the Counseling Center At Charlotte. It’s a pancake supper, so even if you don’t like the speaker, you still get pancakes! It’s a win-win, and a worthy cause.

And remember, for those of you in Tim Walz country, I’m one of the authors speaking at Opus and Olives in St. Paul on Oct. 13.

I have at least one other announcement coming up that I’m really excited about … but that one is not quite ready yet. Stay tuned!

---

---

I took a few sick days last week (feeling much better now), so I missed this when it happened … but I couldn’t let pass the death of Maurice Williams, and the immortal piece of pop history he created with his band, the Zodiacs.

Listen. It won’t take long.

That’s the shortest single, at officially 1 minute and 36 seconds, to ever top the pop charts. But there’s so much packed into that minute and a half. That syncopated, Caribbean-ish beat. Those doo-wop backing vocals. The stop-time beats in the bridge. Maurice’s smooth lead vocal. And the part that pushes it into the heavens: Henry “Shane” Gaston’s yearning falsetto.

Maurice was well-known here in Charlotte—he lived here most of his life and grew up in Lancaster, South Carolina, about 40 miles south. The story goes that one night down in Lancaster, when Maurice was a teenager, he pleaded with his girlfriend to stick around at the end of a date. Your mommy don’t mind, he said. Your daddy don’t mind. Stay a little bit longer.

She went home anyway. The next morning, he got up and wrote a song about it. Seven years later, in November 1960, it hit no. 1.

Some of the coverage about Maurice’s death called him a one-hit wonder, but that’s not exactly true. He wrote another classic, 1957’s “Little Darlin’,” with his group the Gladiolas. It’s an irresistibly weird mix of doo-wop vocals and heavy percussion—the formula that the Four Seasons would ride to fame a few years later. It didn’t quite reach the Top 40, but the cover version by a white group called the Diamonds made it all the way to no. 2. Props to the Diamonds, though: their version is even more over the top than the Gladiolas’—and somehow it works.

But “Stay” is the song that locked into the pop orbit and stayed there. The Four Seasons, not surprisingly, did their own version. So did the Hollies. Cyndi Lauper did a cover with a Latin beat. Jackson Browne used to close his shows with it—”stay just a little bit longer” is exactly what an audience loves to hear—and the single of his live version from the 1977 album RUNNING ON EMPTY hit the top 20.

The original still holds up the best, though. They still play it on the oldies stations, and at the beach music clubs down on the South Carolina coast, and every so often it will pop out of the ether in the background music of a drugstore or barbershop somewhere. It can’t help but make you happy.

Maurice Williams built a career and a life around “Stay,” and deserved to. It feels like a worthy legacy to leave behind a slice of joy, even if it’s only 1 minute and 36 seconds long. If you say it just right, that’s all you need.

---

---

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. My friend Alex Edelman wrote a beautiful piece on the death of his closest friend … and always leaving a light on. (NYT)

2. College football season starts today with a matchup between Florida State and Georgia Tech in that hotbed of American football … Dublin, Ireland. What does it take to get two full teams and their gear across the pond? Stashes of ranch dressing and Tabasco, among other things. (ESPN)

3. I’m generally not drawn to celebrity profiles, but … George Clooney and Brad Pitt? Talking about getting old, and firing strays at Quentin Tarantino? I’m in. (GQ)

4. A story seemingly written personally for my friend and favorite Marylander, Michael Graff: The cult of Old Bay. (New Yorker)

5. Dad’s last day in court. A heart-wrenching beauty. (Boston Magazine)

6. Among the many things I learned from Ben Ryder Howe’s story on Costco: Costco sells HALF of the world’s cashews. (NYT)

7. A lovely tribute to Sphen, the gay penguin. (NYT)

8. We have started watching the latest season of GRANTCHESTER, featuring the third consecutive improbably hot vicar to land in that little village. I want to see a spinoff featuring the seminary that produces all these improbably hot vicars!

9. PURPLE RAIN is 40 this year (whew, I’m old) … I loved this breakdown of “When Doves Cry” for music nerds. (MusicRadar)

10. Another music RIP that I didn’t want to forget: Greg Kihn, a master of that sweet and crunchy genre known as power pop. “Jeopardy” was his big hit (and even spawned a Weird Al parody), but “The Breakup Song” is the good stuff. Those arpeggiated chords go straight to my heart.
    

    
    Have a great week, everybody.

—TT